The road to farm ownership was easier than Damien and Brooke Cocker imagined but had all the twists and turns of every legendary quest.

The young family bought a 136-hectare dairy farm at Sheffield in north-west Tasmania a year ago but only moved in this July.

It was a dream come true for 38-year-old Damien and 30-year-old Brooke.

"Ever since I could walk, I've been, or wanted to be, farming," Mr Cocker said.

He spent two-and-a-half years as a trainee at Wilmot before becoming an apprentice at Rushy Lagoon.

After finishing that apprenticeship, Mr Cocker managed a dairy farm, before a stint as second-in-charge for Grant Archer and then moving into cropping before a new job changed everything.

"Five years ago, I saw a share-farming job come up at Rushy and thought, 'That's for me,' and haven't looked back," he said.

The Cockers share-milked 1500 to 1600 cows for five seasons in two rotary dairies at Rushy Lagoon in the north-east of the state before deciding to look for their ideal first property.

"It had to have scope for irrigation, be big enough that there was potential to employ people, not be landlocked so there was the ability to expand and it had to have a reasonable house or one that could be made reasonable," Mr Cocker said.

The couple sought advice from other farmers and leveraged off-farm expertise, too.

"I talked to a few of my old bosses that had bought farms," he said.

"Fonterra were really good at doing some budgets up for me for different properties that we looked at and I asked them for advice, too."